MIRACULOUS HEALING

The brother of someone I know is not long for this world. My friend and her family are doing everything they can to get to him to say goodbye. All the while the brother has been ill, prayers have been lifted for his miraculous healing.

Another someone that I know of just received a good report – his cancer has not returned. The doctors are scratching their heads in wonder, but they’ve now been introduced to miraculous healing.

The father of someone I know has lymphoma and recently this someone expressed that she was tempted to guard herself against the hope of miraculous healing, lest she be disappointed if the miracle doesn’t come.

Her words resonated with me, perhaps because I’ve been through the cancer journey with family members more than once, and my miracles, as I saw them, didn’t come. As I read her e-mail, however, an idea crystalized in my heart and I knew in that instant that I had to tell her that she shouldn’t give up hope on her miracle, because miracles happen, we just often don’t see or recognize them.

The journey of believing in miracles, and the disappointment and heartbreak of the miracles that never happen, is largely indescribable. The rollercoaster of emotions, the searing burn of hope in your chest, the cold knife of disappointment that pierces the heart, are just the tip of that iceberg. What lies beneath the surface of that journey is a gammut of emotions – hope to anger, faith to doubt, peace to panic – and there are moments where you feel them all at the same time.

As I look back at that part of my journey of faith, I know that I learned more about what’s inside my heart, good or bad, during the time I waited and begged and believed for a miracle. I know I grew and changed and broke into a million jagged pieces – all at the same time.

When I read her words, her trepidation seeping through, I realized something about the miracle I prayed for. Though my brother and others are in heaven now and the miraculous healing I wanted was instead an ultimate healing and not the healing of gifting me with their presence for even a moment longer in this life, in that moment, as I searched my brain for words to encourage her… I had an epiphany.

I didn’t get the miracle I prayed for, but I still got a miracle nonetheless. The miraculous healing came so subtly that it’s been under my radar for years. Yet, spending the last few months reexamining my life and looking for Yahweh’s fingerprints combined with my someone’s timely e-mail, I realized, that all this while, I’d received the miraculous healing.

Chew on that for some moments you will.

If you know anything about my backstory and know what I was going through at the time of my greatest losses, when the hope of a miracle was about all I had left to light my darkness, you’ll know how enormous the disappointment of a perceived “no” to my loved ones’ miraculous healing nearly swallowed me whole. I went on autopilot. That’s how broken my heart was. The life had been sucked out of it. I put it away behind a stone wall and tried to make sense of something that this side of heaven will never make sense at all.

Yet here I am, a few years down the road, still feeling the loss, but also feeling the love and comfort and peace of God again. Feeling. If you know me at all, you’ll know that for me to allow myself to feel anything is a miraculous healing… a healing I received because of the journey I persevered through when the answer to my prayer was, “not this way. My way.”

Yes, hope in the One who gives miraculous healing is definitely the way to go because, no matter what the outcome or answer to prayer, healing is found… and because healing is found… I feel.

yes, she has shared it with me. my eyes are burning, and i just can’t help but think how blessed i am. God has been doing the most incredible stuff in this heart! i trust fully in Him and eagerly await Wednesdays test results! oh yes…our God is a healer…of many things! sharon, this is simply beautiful. i praise God for what He has done in you!! He is amazing me day by day!much love, sw